come before the committee, I think we have a right to ask you to supply the information to the committee.

I think there are very many duplications in public service and activities, and many of them ought to be destroyed. You spoke of 130, putting them in these 12 departments. I would like to have a list of these agencies, those that you think will be annihilated, those that you think will be preserved, and in what group they would naturally fall. I do not think that is asking too much; it is only asking your opinion, anyhow, in that matter.

Mr. MERRIAM. Our idea on that, Senator, was that the task of reallocation is a continuing job and must rest somewhere, and that "somewhere" better be, first, in the original studies of the Bureau of the Budget, and then in the decision of the Executive.

Senator MCNARY. Could you supply a list of these various agencies about which you speak? Is there one to be found in the record?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, if there is not, Senator, we can supply you with one, or put it in the record. The general outline, as nearly as we came to it, is on page 34 of the report, where we set up the 12 main departments.

Senator MCNARY. I have it before me, and I do not get anything out of it. It is too general. In your testimony, and that of others, you proceed upon the theory that you are going to bring about a diminution in expenditures of Government administration, but there is nothing here, nothing that can be said legally, to conclude that that is the immediate purpose of this whole reorganization scheme. Senator TOWNSEND. That was not the underlying thought in the committee, was it, the reduction of expenses?

Mr. MERRIAM. Yes; in the long run. That is, there are different ways of getting economy. Our idea was, having taken a good look at this this was not the first look we had on it-that such a job could not be done effectively except on the basis of a continuing study with the Bureau of the Budget. If we had that kind of arrangement now, you would begin to change it tomorrow. It would have to be readjusted and reset, as it would in any other business. The CHAIRMAN. As experience showed desirable and necessary. Mr. MERRIAM. As experience showed desirable and necessary. Representative TABER. Well, now, what experience showed and what situation showed that the reorganization along the lines you set up was desirable and necessary? I am trying to get the background and the basis for your idea.

Mr. MERRIAM. Our experience is that even since the Bureau of the Budget was set up in 1921, or any time during this period, you might have had an act of Congress covering that whole situation, and various attempts of that sort have been made. They have not, on the whole, been successful. The experience has been one of extreme difficulty and the practical impossibility of getting together in a general act a rearrangement of all the agencies and functions. Representative TABER. Well, the President practically had that authority in the Economy Act of 1933, did he not?

Mr. MERRIAM. Yes; in 1932 and 1933 he had it.

Representative TABER. And in 1933 the President practically had it exclusively under his jurisdiction? Mr. MERRIAM. He did.

Representative TABER. And there was no general reorganization brought about?

Mr. MERRIAM. No; there was not. I need not remind you, however, that the early months of 1933 was a time when the mind of the President and Congress was pretty well preoccupied.

Representative TABER. But there was a very considerable period after 1933 that this authority extended.

Mr. MERRIAM. Not long enough to do very much, Congressman. Representative TABER. How long would it take, in your judgment? Mr. MERRIAM. Well, we thought 2 or 3 years to work that out. Representative TABER. Now, what basis did you start with as your job of working out some kind of a report as to what ought to be done with this Government situation?

Mr. MERRIAM. I tried to explain the general background and basis. Representative TABER. Yes.

Mr. MERRIAM. I see I haven't been effective in doing that.

Representative TABER. Were you started out with a carte blanche to act in the situation and to study it as you pleased and make such recommendations as you pleased, or were you given a definite set-up as to what you were expected to cover and what you were expected to arrive at?

Mr. MERRIAM. No; I myself made originally the first suggestion. I made that to Mr. Delano and then to the President. Will you read that question?

(The question of Representative Taber was read by the reporter.) Mr. MERRIAM. We proceeded on our own system, if that is what you have in mind; without outside suggestions as to the nature and the type of inquiry or what we should or should not discuss and what we should or should not recommend. This is the work of Messrs. Brownlow, Gulick, and Merriam.

Representative TABER. What research did you make into the governmental situation?

Mr. MERRIAM. We set up our staff along last June and various men worked in different departments. Then we had a great deal of help from men in the departments, from the regular employees.

Representative TABER. What kind of employees-heads of departments or the clerical force?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, we talked with as many as we could-heads of departments, bureau heads, and experts in various lines, particularly on administration.

Representative TABER. I wish you would give us some kind of a picture of what assistance you had from experienced governmental administrators.

Mr. MERRIAM. Do you want to take that, Mr. Brownlow?

Mr. BROWNLOW. The staff was made up of people that were chosen because of the studies that they had made and their experience in various matters that we looked to, that we thought might come into the report. For instance, take the matter of personnel; the chief of that staff was Mr. Reeves, who had been the head of the personnel division of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and who, before he had undertaken that work, had made studies in personnel. He was assisted by various other people, some of whom had governmental experience in various levels of government, and some who were

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students of the problem and who had made researches into govern mental matters.

On the matter of the fiscal management, we had Mr. Buck, who is one of the recognized authorities on budgetary practices in the world, of the staff of the Institute of Public Administration, who has participated in the reorganization of many State governments on the fiscal side.

Representative TABER. Was he one of those who participated in the New York State reorganization?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes.

Representative TABER. Which brought about an increase of 20 percent in the cost of the government?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Well, of course, that question also takes in the contents of the activities of the government as well as the organization. I think you would get testimony that in the New York government the cost of administration was not increased, but the activities

were.

Representative TABER. Those who know about it know better.

Senator BARKLEY. What the reorganized government had to administer makes a difference.

Mr. BROWNLOW. Undoubtedly; and it is not affected by the reorganization. It is a matter with respect to the new activities and the expansion of the activities, very largely.

Representative TABER. No; it is very largely a matter of the budget, the way it is set up, the way the budget is set up in most States.

Representative VINSON. The activities of the State were determined by the legislature. You might have an increase of dollar expenditure and you might have economy in the management end of it.

Mr. BROWNLOW. You can effect economies in a State highway commission, you can reduce the expenses of administration and, at the same time, double the expenditures of the department if you double your road-building program.

Representative TABER. You mean you can reduce the cost of administration per mile built?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes.

Representative TABER. Oh, yes.

Mr. BROWNLOW. That is what we are talking about when we talk about administrative management. It was not our problem to substitute the judgment of this committee for the wisdom of Congress with respect to activities undertaken or the expansion or contraction of those particular activities. We were trying to set up a scheme for the administrative management of such activities as were decided upon by the Congress and appropriated for by it.

Representative COCHRAN. Mr. Brownlow, the Congress asked you in the law which was passed allocating the money to you, specifically stating that that money was to be used in part for you to report to us such consolidations as you deemed advisable, and so forth, but you did not go into that, according to your statement.

Mr. BROWNLOW. That was in the division of labor, with the committees presided over by Senator Byrd and Mr. Buchanan. That problem was undertaken as a staff matter for those two committees by the Brookings Institution. I myself was in Europe, but Mr. Harris, the director of research of the committee, talked with Mr. Buchanan at that time. I do not know whether the members of the

committee were there or not. But we allocated from the funds made available to our committee $10,000 to the Brookings Institution to assist in that study.

Representative COCHRAN. I attended that conference with Mr. Buchanan.

Mr. BROWNLOW. Yes; and, of course, to that extent we helped finance the studies that are being made by the Brookings Institution.

Representative COCHRAN. In other words, then, the $10,000 that you allocated from the amount that we appropriated is to cover the work that we set out should be done in that act of Congress?

Mr. BROWNLOW. With respect to the bureau level and to the examination of what actually went on in the bureaus with regard to duplication and overlapping.

Representative COCHRAN. As a matter of fact, you received reports from almost every Government agency in Washington, did you not?

Mr. BROWNLOW. We? No, sir.

Representative COCHRAN. Did you not send out a questionnaire of some character?

Mr. BROWNLOW. No, sir.

Representative COCHRAN. Did you not get any reports at all from any Government agency?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Oh, yes; but we did it by interview and examinaWe sent out no questionnaires, and we were confining ourselves to the problem of over-all administrative management.

tion.

Representative COCHRAN. You never received any written reports, then, that you could pass along to the committee after you go out of existence?

Mr. BROWNLOW. Oh, we have a great many studies based on those interviews that will come along to the committee.

Representative COCHRAN. They are coming later? They will be valuable.

Mr. BROWNLOW. The detailed studies? Some of them, I think, are in the Government Printing Office now, and there are certain other things that are working papers.

Representative COCHRAN. In other words, I wanted to know whether you were going to end with this report that you made here? You are coming in with some other information to us?

Mr. BROWNLOW. With other information in detail at the proper time, backing up our recommendations with respect to the-particularly these three managerial agencies. They are the only ones where we went into the detail of operation.

Mr. MERRIAM. We have a mass of detail which we did not want to dump on you all at once. That will come along. If anyone wants detail, you can get detail to the last item in the particular studies, and also we will produce for you the particular experts at any time you would like to talk to them. These are men of standing, who are competent. They do not know everything in the world, to be sure, but they are men of experience and ability, and at the proper moment we will be glad to give you the detailed studies and produce the experts in the different fields. We tried merely to cover the general picture. I can say at times that you gentlemen may have thought we were not giving you all the detail you wanted; we have

a mass of detail, but we wanted to get in mind first of all the general principles.

Representative COCHRAN. That was my hope, that you would submit that, and this is the first time you have expressed yourself as intending to do it; at least, it is the first time I have heard the expression.

Mr. MERRIAM. It must have been an oversight because we have all of these documents coming along, that is, whenever we get them out of the Government Printing Office.

Representative VINSON. Dr. Merriam, I am interested in knowing your views relative to the function of the committee that might be set up in the Congress, having jurisdiction of or supervision over the budget works. What would that committee do?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, that committee-we have described that in our report here. That would be the committee to which the Auditor General would report on the basis of his audit of executive outlay, and then that committee would examine what was submitted to them, check up further if they liked, and would form their own judgment on the fiscal management of the executive branch of the Government.

Representative VINSON. Would that committee deal with the manner in which the work is carried on as to the policy or as to the economy of the work?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, they can deal with any phase they would like, and I should suppose that kind of committee would want to deal first of all with the fiscal policy that they were using in expending money, how well they used the money and what their practices

were.

Representative VINSON. How would the Auditor General get that information? As I understand it, it is an audit at the time. Mr. MERRIAM. Yes.

Representative VINSON. And the different activities submit the statement of their expenditures, and, so far as I can see, the Auditor General has no first hand information in respect of the administration of the work. Is that correct?

Mr. MERRIAM. No-I do not mean to contradict you, but that is not our understanding of it. He would have not only the information, but he would have all the information that auditor now has. Representative VINSON. The information that auditors have? Mr. MERRIAM. Yes.

Representative VINSON. That is, generally speaking, data, a question of figures. They have no control? That is not in the Auditor General?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, he has no administrative control, but he has legislative control or legislative authority. He would get all of the vouchers and he could go back to the books and check if he likes to, which he does not now do. He could do anything an auditor ordinarily can do in business.

Representative VINSON. I want to make a suggestion that has been in my mind for a number of years, and which, it seems to me, would have not only the purpose of saving much money, but giving the Congress a better picture of what is going on in the executive branch of the Government.